For the first boy to ever steal my heart,
To the people in my life since you, I have always referred to you as my first love. Although I’m not sure that’s too fitting because I don’t think I knew what love meant back then. We were young and we didn’t know what we were doing, but we were happy and so, in turn, it was love for what it meant at the time. You will forever be stuck in my mind as my first kiss, even though I wasn’t yours. And I will continue to tell everyone how I cried the first time you kissed me, because maybe I wasn’t ready to be kissed yet. No hard feelings though.
I hope that you’re doing alright. It’s weird to think about how we knew each other so well at one point in time, and now I know nothing about what you’re doing in your life. It’s been years since we last spoke, and even longer since I saw you. I sometimes wish you were more active on social media just so I could check up every once in a while to see who you had become. But I’m entirely in the dark, as you might be to my life as well.
You don’t cross my mind often, but when you do I always find myself thinking. I wonder if you ever ended up enlisting in the Air Force or going to school. I wonder how your dog is doing and if you ever ended up getting another. I wonder how your mom is and what your brothers look like now. I wonder if would recognize either of them now, since a few years make a huge difference when you’re just a kid. I wonder who you voted for in this last election, if you even voted at all.
My mind tends to wonder if you’ve ever dated anyone else since me. I’ve had a number of different relationships that all ended up being much more serious than ours, although you and I were together the longest. I guess there’s really only a certain level that a high school relationship can ever reach, especially one that started when I was only fifteen. It’s also kind of interesting to think that a couple of immature teenagers were able to keep a stable relationship much longer than any relationship I’ve had since. But to be fair, I’ve decided that boys at our age level now are the worst and, unfortunately, that includes you (even though I have absolutely no clue what you’re like now).
Sometimes I start to feel bad about how things didn’t work out. You didn’t really do anything wrong, just a change in time and my feelings. I guess it rings true when people say that when a heart breaks, it doesn’t break even. By the time I broke things off, I think I was past the heartbreak of losing you, since in my head we were going downhill for a while. I know you didn’t see that though, so you had to deal with it all at once. I was lucky to have gotten a few months to slowly pull myself out of love. You were cut off abruptly, which wasn’t the nicest thing on my part.
It took me forever to tell my parents that we had broken up. I had avoided it for weeks, and it really only came up because my mom had asked about you (since I hadn’t really spoken of you like I used to) and I started crying in the passenger seat of her car. I know that it crushed you when I moved on so quickly. I don’t really think I was ready to, I had just gotten so used to having someone around that I felt withdrawal so much quicker afterwards. I never fully gave myself the time to adjust to you being gone, so it took a lot longer to forget about you. I remember being four months into my next relationship and crying like a baby in my mom’s minivan (driver’s seat this time) over some stupid breakup song on the radio. Kind of embarrassing, yes, but it was enough for me to finally let go.
We can both recognize that I wasn’t the best girlfriend, but to be fair, you weren’t the best boyfriend either. We were young, and neither of us had ever found somebody else before that. We fought like kids sometimes over the stupidest, tiniest, most irrelevant stuff. You would sometimes get jealous. I sometimes got distant. But looking back on every day I’ve lived since then, I’ve learned that the little things don’t matter quite as much in the long run.
I want you to know that I’ve grown up a lot. Literally and mentally. I’m a little bit taller, and my hair is a lot darker. I’ve lost weight since high school. I’m studying what we both knew I always would, at the same school I told you I’d wanted to go to. I got my first car a few months ago, and I know you would’ve agreed that it fits me perfectly. I still have my little leopard gecko, Benji, but he’s not as little anymore. His tank is also super decked out now, which I know you would very much appreciate since he was your son as much as mine.
There is nothing but sincerity when I say that I hope things have been working out for you. I hope you found your passion and that you’re pursuing it. I hope you’re as happy and as lively as you were at seventeen. I hope you feel no remorse or pain or anger when you think of me, as I don’t feel those towards you. I hope you know that I will forever be someone you can count on, if you ever need a friend. I wish you nothing but the best, forever and always.
The girl who loved you first,
Hannah